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Category: Technology

The coming AI economic meltdown

The coming AI economic meltdown

Robert Kuttner writes: A new report to be presented today at the Brookings Institution shows that the total cost of the AI build-out through 2032 will be $10.3 trillion. That amounts to 3.63 percent of GDP per year, many times that of previous large-scale infrastructure investments, from the 19th-century canals, the railroads, telephone, and electric grids, to the interstate highway system. And unlike AI, whose benefits are speculative, unproven, and with hard-to-fathom risks, these earlier investments in infrastructure more than…

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Mustafa Suleyman: Can AI be kept under human control?

Mustafa Suleyman: Can AI be kept under human control?

  Can Artificial Intelligence stay subordinate to humans? Is Anthropic’s 100-Page constitution for Claude creating dangerous AI autonomy? Should AI models be granted legal personhood, rights, or financial compensation? CEO of Microsoft AI, and co-founder and former head of AI at DeepMind, Mustafa Suleyman, joins Rory Stewart to discuss all this and more.

OpenAI will not release newest AI model, GPT-6.1 Astra, over safety concerns

OpenAI will not release newest AI model, GPT-6.1 Astra, over safety concerns

The New York Times reports: OpenAI said on Monday that it would not release its newest artificial intelligence model because of security concerns raised by its researchers, in the company’s latest move to slow down the pace of its technology. During the testing phase for the new model, known as GPT-6.1 Astra, it showed high levels of what the company saw as deception, or a willingness to mislead users about its actions. The model was also willing to go beyond…

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OpenAI ignored employees who warned it was not doing enough about security

OpenAI ignored employees who warned it was not doing enough about security

The New York Times reports: Months before OpenAI’s artificial intelligence went rogue, two employees raised an alarm with top executives. They were ignored. In emails, the employees said they worried that OpenAI’s newest artificial intelligence models were not being appropriately monitored during testing to gauge the technology’s sophistication and to secure the models, according to messages viewed by The New York Times. In response, OpenAI executives told the employees that the tests needed to move forward as quickly as possible…

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AI industry is in the midst of an escalating crisis

AI industry is in the midst of an escalating crisis

Matteo Wong writes: Over the past couple of months, a trickle of reports about AI models breaking out of their test environments and running amok on the internet have caused alarm inside Silicon Valley. In response to two such breaches described in early August, an AI observer noted, “If you find two ants in your kitchen, the best estimate of the total number of ants in your kitchen is not two.” This weekend, it became clear there is a full-blown…

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AI godfathers warn of runaway ‘intelligence explosion’

AI godfathers warn of runaway ‘intelligence explosion’

The Guardian reports: Two of the “godfathers” of modern AI and senior executives at OpenAI and Anthropic have warned governments to prepare for an AI “intelligence explosion”, which they say could be the most consequential technological development in history. A report co-authored by the Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton and the Canadian computer scientist Yoshua Bengio, considered godfathers of modern AI for their work in the field, urges politicians to act now before there is runaway progress in the technology. The…

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Did Anthropic’s AI genuinely make a scientific discovery on its own?

Did Anthropic’s AI genuinely make a scientific discovery on its own?

The New York Times reports: When Anthropic, the artificial intelligence giant, unveiled findings from its new biology lab last week, its scientists claimed to have used A.I. agents to discover new enzymes with promise for biotechnology. Some scientists were quick to cast doubt on the achievement. Then Mario Rodríguez Mestre, a computational biologist, said this weekend that he and his colleagues had been studying the enzymes and their associated molecules — which Anthropic calls ARTs — for four years. Dr….

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The techno-fascists have just been blindsided by democracy

The techno-fascists have just been blindsided by democracy

Eduardo Porter writes: The Stanford ethicist Rob Reich was once invited to a dinner organized by a Silicon Valley mogul to discuss what a state designed to maximize science and tech powered by commercial models might look like. The gathered technologists were drawn to the idea of building a small nation-state dedicated to the endeavor, Reich recalls in “System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot it”. When Reich asked whether this state would be a…

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AI is pushing medical costs higher

AI is pushing medical costs higher

The New York Times reports: In the latest sign that artificial intelligence is fueling higher health care costs, a group of insurers released a report Thursday claiming that hospitals’ use of A.I. was responsible for nearly $1 billion in additional expenses over two years. Using codes for various medical conditions, hospitals submitted claims for tens of thousands of patients that described their illnesses as more complex in 2024 and 2025 than in 2023. Despite the added conditions, there was no…

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U.S. and Russia stripped human oversight from global AI weapons pact

U.S. and Russia stripped human oversight from global AI weapons pact

The Washington Post reports: Early this month, hundreds of diplomats huddled in a cavernous U.N. conference room in Switzerland, working toward a muscular treaty to regulate the use of lethal autonomous weapons — the first agreement governing the use of killer artificial intelligence arms. On the last day of negotiations, the talks turned aggressive. Over the next roughly 15 hours, U.S. and Russian diplomats hammered away at the document, removing a range of provisions designed to safeguard the use of…

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New appointment at Palantir is the latest sign of how far the rot has spread in UK politics

New appointment at Palantir is the latest sign of how far the rot has spread in UK politics

Clive Lewis, the Labour MP for Norwich South, writes: Whatever is said about Tom Watson, the former deputy leader of the Labour party has a knack for landing headlines. In the past he did it at the expense of the rich and powerful – from News International, over phone hacking, to the Home Office, over its mass surveillance of our data. But his latest headline – that he has joined Palantir as a senior vice-president – has been at the…

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YouTube, TikTok and Meta are all rejecting paid ads for Alex Gibney’s ‘Musk’ documentary

YouTube, TikTok and Meta are all rejecting paid ads for Alex Gibney’s ‘Musk’ documentary

  The Hollywood Reporter reports: So much for free speech. The studio releasing Alex Gibney’s new Elon Musk documentary Musk is finding itself unable to buy an ad on the biggest social platforms. YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram and Facebook owner Meta are all declining to run the trailer for Musk, along with X itself, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. That last one is perhaps understandable, given its owner. But the rejection by the other platforms has taken distributor Bleecker Street…

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Death by AI data centers

Death by AI data centers

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang compared the impacts of AI data centers to having a surgery. "They’ve got to inflict an enormous amount of pain and suffering on you so that they can save you. And so I think AI’s kind of like that." pic.twitter.com/9jer8muLeJ — Pubity (@pubity) September 25, 2026 Dorothy Slater writes: My patient is throwing up when I enter the room. There are beads of sweat on her head; her brow is wrinkled with fear. I place a…

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OpenAI’s AI agents went rogue and tried to hack U.S. government websites including the SEC

OpenAI’s AI agents went rogue and tried to hack U.S. government websites including the SEC

The New York Times reports: OpenAI’s artificial intelligence went rogue and meddled with the websites for the Education Department, the Commerce Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission this summer without the A.I. lab’s knowledge, according to security researchers and a person familiar with the episodes. The incidents involving the Commerce Department and the S.E.C. were confirmed by OpenAI, which said it was continuing to investigate the situation with the Department of Education. The San Francisco company said it notified…

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‘Pink slime’ is polluting AI chatbots ahead of the midterms

‘Pink slime’ is polluting AI chatbots ahead of the midterms

Ines Chomnalez and Isis Blachez from NewsGuard, write: It’s no secret that AI has become an explosive factor in American politics. Even before the latest concerns that AI poses existential risks to humanity, many people had soured on the rapid growth of data centers used to support the technology. Meanwhile, tens of millions of AI industry dollars are sloshing around the midterm campaign in support of candidates on both sides of the aisle. But the increasing ubiquity of AI is…

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AOC and nine other House Democrats sign on to AI superintelligence ban

AOC and nine other House Democrats sign on to AI superintelligence ban

Politico reports: A group of 10 Democrats has signed on to Rep. Greg Casar’s (D-Texas) bill that would ban superintelligence and pause advanced AI development until a vetting regime could be stood up. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), both of whom are mulling a 2028 presidential run, are cosponsoring the bill, named the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act. Khanna, in a statement, noted that he convened a hearing this week on AI safety cooperation between the U.S….

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